The New Way to Build Confidence (Without Fixing Yourself First)
Why your healing isn’t working—and the surprising shift that reveals who you really are.
The Lie
You’ve been told confidence comes from mastery. From achieving more. Knowing more. Doing it all right.
But what if that’s the very belief keeping you stuck?
What if your struggle isn’t a lack of ability—but a trauma-trained habit of self-rejection? If you constantly reject all or parts of yourself, you will always be triggered when someone else does the same. You will despise their comments and criticism claiming they know not of what they speak, but the sad part is— you are doing that to yourself and that is the only reason it hurts.
This week, we’re disrupting the idea that you need to “fix” yourself before you can feel whole.
Because real confidence doesn’t come from improvement. It comes from alignment with your true identity.
The Living Lesson
Emotional congruence is when your inner state matches your outer expression.
You say what you mean. You mean what you feel. You stop shape-shifting to be liked, picked, or validated.
You’re no longer at war with your own nervous system.
You don’t need to “fake it” to feel confident. Matter of fact, you can’t fake anything to make it, what you can do though is keep braving and doing until it becomes part of you but that is an entirely different rant for another day.
You just need to remember who you actually are beneath the performance.
There is someone I care about and love, but he often gets triggered by people questioning his qualities or decisions. He immediately feels he has to justify and instantly feels shame. His entire demeanor changes and he resorts to childlike behaviors and feelings in response to such events.
The truth is, this has been a long-standing pattern in his life. His siblings or parents were always kind of ‘black sheep’ nagging him his entire life. Initially, he will shrug it off and say he is proud of who he is, but you can literally see it eating away at his soul as he questions his own worth. He has learned to doubt himself and his worth due to the opinions of others. He then rejects those parts of himself or tries to hide or smolder them into nonexistence.
Eventually, they surface (because they are him, in fact some of the best parts of him) and he gets another trigger and thus the cycle repeats. What he is not seeing is that the only way this will ever get better is if HE accepts those parts of him, and we know we have reached a state of acceptance when we master indifference. Not that we don’t still care what our loved ones or strangers say, but not to the point where we must contort ourselves to appease their uncomfortable emotions. Not where we have to make decisions in alignment with their likes instead of from our own heart and inner knowing.
Remembering who we are requires we don’t reject who we are, not a single part.
This isn’t about inner division, it’s about revolution through resolution. Accepting all of you, even the parts you are healing, is key. It shows your own worth to yourself— the only one ever needing proving. It shows that you can still grow but you know who you are and you aren’t afraid to be just that in the world. It brings you the deepest sense of peace and safety in your own skin, one likely you haven’t yet experienced, yet it also brings you freedom and liberation because no one, especially not yourself, can ever cage you again with words, conditioning, lies, etc.
Gaining Vantage
When your nervous system stops guessing who it needs to be in each room, you reclaim your energy.
The fog lifts. The anxiety settles. You don’t need to control everything—because you trust yourself to respond, not perform.
You stop villainizing yourself for the behaviors that were once survival.
Shame becomes recognition. Guilt becomes grief and then RELEASE. And you realize: “I was never the problem—I was simply the protector.”
Confidence becomes your baseline state—not something you work toward.
It’s quiet. It’s grounded. It’s the moment you say no without apology. Confidence roots from the words ‘full trust’.
When was the last time you felt you could fully trust in yourself? Be honest, and kind to yourself for the answer.
The moment you stop asking for permission to be yourself.
That’s not fake-it-‘til-you-make-it energy. That’s reclaimed identity— a way better approach that more surface level fake bullshit you don’t need more of or cringe at entangling yourself in.
And it’s available when you stop trying to be worthy and start being honest.
The Cycle to Break
Let’s map it out:
Trauma happens. You learn certain emotions make you unsafe.
You adapt. You shape-shift, shrink, overachieve, numb, or disappear.
You internalize guilt. You think: “It’s my fault. I’m too much. I’m not enough.”
You seek healing… but from a place of fixing, not freeing.
You chase confidence by efforting, controlling, managing.
And it works—until it doesn’t. Until it breaks you. Again, and again, and again until you feel shattered and lost with barely the energy or the will to come up for air.
The Shift
You’re not flaky. You’re not lazy. You’re not too emotional.
You’re a human who adapted to survive. And now, your body is asking for a new pattern:
One rooted in truth. One based in congruence. One that honors the real you.
Shifting from shame to sovereignty— owning who you are and all you have been through with the bold audacity of knowing what you came to this earth to do.
Reframe the Shame
Use this anytime you feel the self-sabotage cycle kick in.
REVEAL:
What am I blaming myself for right now?
Is this really about failure—or a learned way to feel safe?REFRAME:
What’s the compassionate interpretation of this?
What’s the most honest version of what I need?REINFORCE:
What aligned micro-action can I take that supports the real me?
Not to impress. To integrate. (Write this down, post it up, and use it daily.)
Fuck the Fix
You don’t need to fix yourself to feel confident, in fact, confidence can only be built by doing that is what you doubt you can. No fixing, just experimenting. And when you experiment, you instead remember who you are, not who you had to adapt to be. And reinforce this by taking action practicing choices that align with the real you.
The reason you feel lost and insecure is because you have detached from all you are.
When your inner world and outer world start speaking the same language, you’ll find the safety you’ve been searching for in external results… was inside your truth all along.
Seek the Sovereign
Your next step is to identify yourself with the you you already are. You don’t need to become someone new. You need to meet the most aligned version of you. Your sovereignty and freedom can only reign when you reclaim ALL of you that you diminished due to your shame.
Start by taking the Alchemy Archetype Quiz—a free self-discovery tool that helps you understand your inner pattern, personal power, and unique way of moving through transformation. Your archetype already IS YOU. The REAL you. The one that you know in your core to be. Harness her and her energy.
Because confidence doesn’t come from effort. It comes from experiment and embodiment.
And you can’t embody who you are if you have forgotten who that is.
Take the Archetype Quiz (Free) | Discover your dominant Alchemist Type + Get the Free Archetype Blueprint | Begin living as the version of you who no longer needs fixing.
Next post we enter the fire. We shed the old self, drop the mask, and begin your emotional alchemy— see you then soverign.
xoxo,
Mandi